Waiting On An Angel
by Amber6
Summary: AU. Jack's facing a busy day in the emergency room when a familiar face rattles through the door....
1. Chapter 1

**Waiting On An Angel**

**Chapter 1 9/12/05**

**It's just another night. Just another boring shift. Just another slow crawl into the daylight hours, as the night passes you by and your body once again falls into that unnatural, nocturnal rhythm. You can almost feel the cogs groaning and reversing. You can almost feel the care slipping away.**

**It scares you sometimes, you realise, as you wander along bland ivory corridors and attempt to look busy and occupied in a patient file. Scares you, as you pass a waiting room full of patients, and relatives, and the expectant eyes of a bored child reach your own. You can remember those long years ago, not long ago at all but oh, how it feels it sometimes. When you first qualified, that face would have stirred you, and the cumulative pain that filled that room, pulled on the strings tying your heart down and maybe 0ne or two would have severed. You wanted to help them all, all at once and fix every cut and hear each untold story. You wanted to be the very best doctor you could be, more than that. You wanted to be your father. The best doctor in the world… or so you had thought. **

**Things are clearer now.**

**You wonder when the change began. When too many heart strings had been broken, and that empathy and compassion no longer found the surface quite so easily. When you could walk past a waiting room without even glancing up from your notes, or catching an eye, or even managing a smile. You know it happens to all doctors, that it has to to some extent to remain sane in a job where there will never be enough time for each patient. But you still wonder when you became the exact kind of doctor you always said you wouldn't; not that you didn't care but that somehow, the reflex had become blunted. There had been too much pain, both professionally and personally, to dare allow yourself to let anymore in willingly. Too much pain. Too much spread across the grey faces you now sometimes catch yourself looking straight through, and not really seeing… and those shards of pain gradually frayed that cords holding your heart down, and let it float away altogether.**

**Sometimes you feel empty. Sometimes… sometimes you look to the heavens and try to track it down again, as though feeling and emotion and happiness could float back down again to settle in that cavity in your chest. Float down on angel's wings. You stand and feel the first fall of snow of the tip of your nose, hold out your tongue like you did when you were a kid, and wish endlessly that things were that simple now. That swallowing that first unique edge of winter, that white fleck of frozen rain, could somehow be equivalent to swallowing your angel. The one who, somewhere you cannot find, sits and holds your heart dear until you can find it again.**

**IWaiting**

**On an angel**

**One to carry me home**

**I hope you come **

**To see me soon**

'**Cause I don't wanna go alone/I**

**It's been a couple of months since you started your sabbatical in the ER. There was an incident, one of those indefinable things you're not really allowed to talk about to anyone; another surgeon was called to the General Medical Council to answer a patient's accusations, and it fell to you to give the minor circumstantial evidence against your colleague. Trouble was, of course, was that that colleague was your father, and those words you had to speak helped to get him suspended pending further investigation. You can remember forcing them out, feeling like a Judas. You can remember of betrayal on his face… You can remember ripping colourful paper from your first stethoscope. Oh, you were five, and it was plastic, but those thuds of a heart beat you heard in your ears were still so real. And the look of pride in your father's face, now thirty years replaced with something like disappointment. Disappointment he'd go bury in the bottom of a bottomless whiskey glass.**

**And so you were sent down here, just until things cooled off upstairs, and those old school men who have worked with your father his whole professional life, realise this isn't your fault. You did what you had to do. **

**It's funny. You thought you wouldn't fit in… that maybe they'd be expecting a real ER doctor and you'd have forgotten all but that endless jangle of nerves in that thin sheaf of tissue, and the irreparable consequences even minor damage to that bundle of fibres could cause. But it slowly comes back to you every day, and a lot of the time it's little things like triage they put you on, because you are precise and efficient but still manage to put the patients at ease. You remember ER rotation in fifth year of med school, and how you went home each day citing your enthusiasm for the discipline; and how your father shunned it, I"God damn ER docs, ripping the patient to shreds and then sending him up to us to do the real work…"/I. And so you agreed, and fell into a life of surgery… because you liked it too, but mainly because it was easier to just agree.**

"**Eli." You speck the name aloud as you enter one of the small examination rooms, scan the notes in your hand. A small boy sits atop the gurney, that bed that is far too big for him, in a room that is far too adult for him. A older, slightly greying nurse holds his hand… Madison? Matigan? You're learning names, but it's a slow process in such a large department, and you swear it seems the shifts are conspired against you to ensure you work with as many different people as possible.**

**You close the door behind you, flip the blinds, exhale. And you turn. And smile like you mean it.**

**The nurse - Matigan, she mouths to you, you knew one of those was right - stays for the consultation. Eli's mother is apparently out in the ambulance bay trying to calm clients she's supposed to be with; Eli explains through tousled blonde curls that Mommy is an interior designer. Or an intewiowr designewr. Eli Peyton is five years old, and all intermittent shyness and boyishness, and raves about how he managed the nice greenstick fracture you suspect he's suffered. Apparently, as he stood aboard his Bart Simpson skateboard and held tight to Custard the German Shephard's lead, he forgot the dog didn't know to just run Islowly/I. Wrist met sidewalk, as did forehead, and the rest tails off as you set up the portable X ray machine.**

**Matigan, or Mattie, as she tells you to call her, steps out the room as you fire off the X ray, trying to bribe Eli into keeping still for five minutes. Clearly the idea of having a 'cool neon cast' and getting all his mates to sign it, is worth the pain of a snapped radius. You have to smile as he squirms right up to the point of snapshot. You are becoming so used to people unconscious, or in severe pain, or just too broken by life to bother making conversation anymore. You ease the injured arm from the wooden block used to stop the rays from passing out the other side, and wait as the film develops. Mattie re-enters, jots down the procedure in the patient chart, hands Eli a cup or cordial to his good hand. Slyly, knowing all the while you can seem slips him a mini pack of Oreo's. Slowly the picture comes through as you examine the lump on the child's head, and test his light and progress reflexes.**

"**So Doctor Shephard, do I get to chose the colour of my cast? How long do I get to wear it for? Do you guys use a chainsaw to cut it off again?…" That excited singsong voice rises and falls, as Mattie somehow manages to get two child ibuprofen down his throat. **

"**sure thing. Huge one like the lumberjacks use. We've gotta be careful with them, ya know, one slip…"**

**Eli looks at you with serious blue eyes. And then he sees your joking expression, and that boisterousness cuts through. **

"**We should probably check your X-ray first mind you…" You look over to his excited face. "How's about you help me find what's up with you?"**

**He is off the bed and over to the X ray machine before you know it, cradling his right arm gently. You whip the film out, flick the switch on the light box; it is, of course, what you suspected. Classical presentation. Eli's right radius bone in his wrist has snapped, but only half the way through; a green stick fracture. Uniquely found in children before puberty hits, like the way a green branch from a spring sapling is so hard to break entirely in half; young bones, still that extra bit of give and elasticity as they grow.**

"**Right, Dr. Peyton…" You kneel down beside his agile form. "What do ya reckon's wrong with that?"**

"**Gweenstick fwactuwre." He replies, copying the words and grinning mischievously. **

"**Now he can't say I didn't get a second opinion." You say to Mattie, and the older woman smiles.**

**Eli squeals excitedly, and listen as he runs through the colour options for casts. You smile too, but this time you actually do mean it.**

**The door bursts open, and you turn, expecting to see Eli's mom to explain the procedure and gain consent to start making preparations for Eli to get his arm bandaged and put in plaster. **

"**Dude, they need you in Trauma Room 2..." It is Hurley, the somewhat overweight receptionist. He makes you laugh, so easy going, so full of life. You stand immediately.**

"**What we got?"**

"**I don't know the full story, but the paramedics said white female, late twenties, some kind of blunt chest trauma and…" He turns away, signalling to move off from the child. "Suspected rape."**

**You swallow. "Eta?"**

"**Two minutes."**

**You turn back to the bed as Hurley plods from the room, absentmindedly mutter thanks for the heads up. Your mind is running through all the drugs, all the legal technicalities, all the things you're frightened to fk up; and you turn back to that mass of dirty blonde curls.**

"**Okay, Eli…" You make a note on the chart Mattie holds out for you. "I think together we might have just solved the mystery of your floppy wrist, so now as soon as your mom's back we'll get her to sign something and then whisk you off to get that yellow and blue polka dot cast on, k?" You smile as you subconsciously assess his vital signs. He seems pretty okay for a kid with a splintered bone.**

"**Okay, Dr. Shephard." He seems to have found the shyness again. You grin. He's a sweet kid.**

"**Make sure you come show me before you rush home to show Custard his handiwork, alright?"**

**The yellow tangles bounce as he nods, and Mattie smiles that she's okay to stay with him. You roll up your sleeves, let the door swing shut behind you, grab a disposable apron as you make the walk along linoleum floor to the trauma room. Maybe thirty seconds of peace left. You really need a piss. You really need a sleep. But then you think of your dark apartment, and the Chinese takeout from two nights ago that's gonna walk out to the trash itself soon, and the lonely wail of sirens as they drown into the night. And you know where you'd rather be.**

**The commotion is sudden and controlled, planned route from bay to trauma room, planned spiel of information to rattle off. The rest of the team, the two nurses and senior and junior house officer all grab the gurney as the paramedics crash through the glass doors. Miriam, a woman who's name you do somehow know, steps aside with you ever so briefly to give you the run down.**

"**White female, late twenties we think, found crawling on the sidewalk outside a pretty grotty apartment down on 103rd. Someone said she ran out the door in kind of a panic, and then just seemed to collapse. Police are down there now." She catches your eye. "Basically she's got an ungent tension pneumothorax caused by what seems to be a Swiss army knide, and pretty substantial vaginal bleeding and associated trauma**

**and bruising consistent with rape. Naturally with the tension pneumo she hasn't managed to tell us if it is rape, but you know the drill."**

**You take the information in, register that you do indeed know to work on a rape until told otherwise basis, nod your thanks. The frail body is hoisted to the hospital gurney, and Miriam and Steve leave their part of the job behind.**

**You approach the bed swiftly, do a visual assessment, the extreme shortness of breath, the obvious building air effusion in her left lung, and those emerald eyes which find yours, and flinch.**

"**Miriam!" You call after the receding figure. She turns.**

"**What's her name?"**

"**Kate Austen." **

"**You're gonna be okay, Kate." And you can feel the care returning.**

**There's so much to do. So much to do, and an order in which it must be done. One of the nurses - Claire? - grabs a catheter kit, automatically, from the trolley, and you rip it from her hands. Too harsh. You take her to one side, explain swiftly to eyes which gaze at the floor that all evidence must be preserved. Her gentle Australian accent lilts and flutters as she apologises profusely. **

**You've already left the conversation before she even begins.**

**You don't mean to be crude, or too hard. You don't mean to yell. But there's something about the fragments of a life lying before you; the shattered body lying on the hard, generic gurney as you stand tall and strong and undamaged above her. Something about the way, even though you know nothing beyond this patient's name, nothing beyond her hair colour, have no responsibility to her past the authority of a doctor… you feel like you should have been there. Should have been in a place you don't even know, to stop all this happening to the stranger before you. **

**And because you weren't, there is one thing left you can do. You need to make it better. You need those pieces of DNA he will have left, to be found and preserved and betray his identity. **

**You need to restore her. **

**All of this takes seconds. Seconds for you to know, you have to fix her. You have to somehow make this better. **

**She is scraping for breath, wild panic in eyes which refuse to meet anyone else's. You work on autopilot; thinking of nothing past the present moment, yet somehow all those moments add up into minutes of action and progress. IV in. Pain relief. Monitor attached. Sterilise the area around the wound in her chest, insert the chest drain; watch the instant relief, the sudden whoosh of air escaping, the pressure build up diffusing out. **

**Those eyes; they meet yours again, somehow a tunnel of vision creating itself despite the exposure of her bloody chest, the numerous clinical items she is attached to, the five other bodies which circulate and make notes and speak in hushed whispers you wish she couldn't hear. She is full of fright and pain, shock, and above all a resounding fear which leaps from her as real as air. She finds you in the chaos… and the inch of peace in her eyes, it's all you need. **

**You smile weakly at Ms. Austen, as Claire pushes another five of morphine through the IV; you try to forget about the rawness inside her, the other place she will be bleeding from, the images which must be rasping through her head. **

**Her breathing slowly subsides to normal, the progress achingly gradual. And you hold her eyes, desperate to give her something other than those images to think of.**

**The phone call is awful. It's too factual, too clinical, too abrupt. You want to tell the woman on the other end about the person she is to come to examine. Abercrombie & Fitch jeans, the aqua green top torn and becoming stiff and brown in the uneven flow of where blood has spilled. The gasp she made in pain, as she was transferred from the paramedic's stretcher to the hospital gurney. You want her to understand there is more than a name and an assault.**

"**I'll be there within the hour, Dr. Shephard." She's done this a million times. You know she has.**

**Maybe she's just impatient. Maybe you're quiet too long. "Dr. Shephard?"**

"**Uhm, yeah, that's fine." **

"**Do you… know the patient, Dr. Shephard?"**

**You think of her, Kate Austen, lying sedated and abused behind you… can see the bruising and swelling that flares up as her body tries to begin repair, foolishly believing it is the physical wounds that need healing. And you want to say yes, for you don't want her to be alone. You want for her to know someone, so when she wakes, there is a familiar face to tell her everything will be okay.**

"**No. No, I don't know the patient."**

**The line goes dead, and you feel there's something left unsaid.**

**Other patients are a good distraction for a while; John Locke, with a sudden numbness in his left leg, Charlie Pace attempting to blag some morphine, weakly complaining of headaches. His voice is shaking, hands fidgety and trembling, sweat pouring from his forehead. You return five minutes later with a bottle of methadone and he storms out, stumbling and slamming into people, disgruntled. **

**It's always the same. He's in every week. He's the kind of patient that makes you question your commitment to the job. **

**You're filling out the necessary forms for a patient self discharge form when she appears. Young, tall, blonde; looking like the spoilt daughter of a rich city financier. You don't know why, but you were expecting someone older, more experienced, more solid. Hurley escorts Miss Rutherford to where you stand, in the midst of medical trolleys and patients and all chaos imaginable.**

"**Shannon Rutherford." The woman extends her hand.**

"**Jack Shephard. She's… she's right this way."**

**You lead the blonde girl - she's barely more than a girl - to the side room where Ms. Austen has been moved now she's stable. You think of Charlie Pace, throwing his life away on drugs and lost days, the things he could have achieved if only someone had told him 'no'. And then there's Kate Austen; who you don't know, who you will never know past saving her life… this slip of a girl who exudes beauty even now. You think that no matter what she might have done, she doesn't deserve any of this. No-one does. You swing open the door for Miss Rutherford, finding that fragile form hidden under starched sheets, and wonder if there will ever again be a day where Kate Austen can carry herself through without thinking of the abomination inflicted upon her. **

**It takes an hour or more to convince Ms. Austen to consent to the procedure. You almost want to tell her not to have it done. It's horrid and invasive and rips away any shred of dignity the patient might have left. It's personal, too personal, when all she will want to do is shower and scrub at herself until all that invisible dirt, the black that no-one else can see, is gone. She doesn't want a smear, a pregnancy test, to pass urine through torn membranes to check for STD's. She wants to be left alone to try and blockade the memories and tears that threaten.**

**She wants to forget the violation ever occurred.**

**And that's why, as you leave the room and Ms. Austen turns away from the implements placed in perpendicular lines on a tray; you feel like you've betrayed her. **

**The side room is finally quiet; all probing and exposure over with, sheets replaced, Ms. Austen made as comfortable as she can be. A single IV hangs from the back of her hand, and she lies with her back to the door as you enter, Matigan accompanying you for the peace of mind of the patient. **

**From the end of the bed you can see her eyelashes moving in fearful silence. She turns, so slight that at first you think you are imagining the movement. **

"**Ms. Austen…"**

"**Kate." Her voice is a whisper… so hoarse, so raw. She doesn't look at you. She doesn't look at anything at all.**

"**Kate." You begin again. "Miss Rutherford said the results would be back in the next twenty four hours." You say this so quietly, so not wanting to remind her of the invasive procedure she has just undergone. **

**She blinks, says nothing, blinks again. You want to sit on the end of the bed and say what really matters; IYou're safe now. He can't get you, he won't ever get you again. We'll fix you./I**

"**If there's anything I can do…" Your heart is thudding against your chest with anger towards whoever did this to her. It's the first time you've felt it in so long, the first time in as long as you can remember you felt truly alive and compassionate towards another. You look at Kate, who you didn't even know existed twelve hours ago… battered and broken, her heart full of only dread and fear of the nightmares to come when sleep beckons. No peace to be found in day or night dreams… and you want to give your heart to her, to try and mend that little part, so the healing might spread and fill her whole.**

**She doesn't move as you back quietly out the room; Mattie nods that she will stay for a few minutes more, just in case Kate opens up with only a woman in the room. It's at that moment that Eli, the little boy with the fractured wrist, barrels into you, apparently trying to break the other one too.**

"**Dr. Shephard!" He cries, holding up a fluorescent green arm, his new cast already cluttered with best wishes from hospital staff. "Check it out! It was so cool, they let me do the bit around my thumb myself and they said I could stay off school tomorrow and…" He is full of excitement and adrenaline, stuffed with it, overflowing from him. **

**You glance from Kate to Eli, round and back again, the contradictions compounding. One quiet, one loud. One on the brink of life, so excited, living each day as if it might be the last… and one too pounded by life, full of the pain and cynicism that comes with adulthood, having just lived through the day that could have so easily been her last. One protected by every measure available; parents and school and curfews and limited sweets… and one who has somehow been abandoned along the way, allowed to slip into the cracks of vulnerability.**

**Eli whispers to you from the doorway, glancing at Kate's unmoving form with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. He sees her blink, inhale, exhale, blink again.**

"**What's wrong with her?" He's too young. He doesn't know the horrors that fill the world, not yet. You look into those gleaming blue eyes… place your hand atop his head, nestling into the wild blonde curls which bounce as if animated. Eli looks up to you, all awe and admiration, as you gently steer him away from the things he shouldn't see. And you want to lead him to Neverland, so he never needs to know the horrors the human race is capable of.**

"**She's… she's just had a pretty rough day, Eli. She just needs some rest." Oh, if it were that easy. If sleep alone could heal those wounds deep within her that no scalpel, no forceps, nothing but time will ever hope to fix.**

"**But she doesn't look sick."**

"**Sometimes people hurt on the inside, buddy. Sometimes… sometimes it's not an obvious thing, like your arm."**

"**Like when you feel sad?"**

**You look at him, all innocence and daydreams and through the mask of childhood, the first remnants of maturity appearing.**

"**Yeah, Eli. Something a bit like that."**


	2. Chapter 2

You move automatically through the rest of the shift… somehow shifting from patient to patient, but with a jerking inconsistency. You see faces, hear complaints, treat and dress wounds and console… and you know, all the while, that your eyes and voice are doing the best possible job at making you look and sound concerned. But there's something hard about seeing grown men with minor problems, teenage parents full and round and terrified with a child grown of their own fault and decision, head lac's that require nothing more than a few stitches and a couple of ibuprofen. Those minor problems, those self inflicted woes, somehow juxtapose themselves against the image of Kate Austen in your mind, of her body which literally shock with mental and physical distress. The way she didn't even flinch as IV's were inserted, blood drawn, skin exposed to search for the trauma. Where another patient would have whined and protested, she lay curled into herself, in another world entirely; in that world too painful for any other infliction to even begin to make an impact.

Those head lac' stitches will dissolve into the skin, white dash of a scar disappearing into hair and long forgotten. And while her stitches too will resolve themselves, their implication will lie full and heavy within her. She'll wake, years from now in the middle of the night, maybe next to a man, her child, both; falling within her own dreams that of course aren't dreams at all. This day will become years old, decades, and still the memory of that invasion will reverberate within her, and that is what may never dissolve.

Your fourteen hour shift ends up being seventeen… but there's the familiar joke of add three or more to the number of hours of any shift in the ER, so you expect it. There's just too many patients filling the board, too many charts stuffing the rack, too much paperwork to fill out, sitting and shattered in the darkened suture room at three in the morning.

You don't mind. There's only the cold loneliness, the empty fridge, the uncaring and inpersonal blare of the TV for you at home; the laundry you never seem to find time for, the photos on the mantle whose faces you avoid. The memories that fill the place, dive up the walls and under the carpet, haunting you.

And that's why, and for a million other reasons you can't quite quantify or qualify; as you punch out and glance at the clock, it's not the locker room you walk to, or the vending machines for a much needed sugar kick, or even the exit. With this long, desolate corridor finally quiet, and passing the young doctors just starting their shifts… you walk towards the elevator, punch the number six, listen to the hum as the gears kick in and you are jerked upwards.

And it's only as those silver doors shudder open, and the unique silence of this place saturates you, you realise where you are.

And who for.

"_So speak kind to a stranger  
'Cause you'll never know  
It just might be an angel come  
Knockin' at your door"_

Inhale, exhale.

Inhale, exhale.

Nose wrinkles, hair falls before a face, the faint light outlines a profile like a cityscape frozen.

She looks at peace. It's amazing, you think as you settle into the seat beside the bed and monitors, the veil that sleep has descended upon her. Looking at her, without knowing the contents of the notes that sit at the end of the bed, without having plunged that chest drain into her in a single urgent sweep… she could just be sleeping. She could be resting after a shock, dozing her way into oblivion. From the outside, there is nothing to suggest that her life has been forever changed.

From the outside, there is no rape.

It's the inside, hidden and haunting, where all the pain lies. Where the insult sits like a cancer, squirming and growing cell by cell.

Kate Austen writhes through dreams… slowly surfacing into consciousness, like breaking into fresh air from gliding underwater. You glance at the monitor as her eyes scrunch and slowly open, her hands gripping those hard starched sheets like a lifeline. You concentrate on the figures for those first few seconds, those easy flickers of neon green; for you know it's not your place to watch as her eyes stream from confusion to disorientation, through those memories, and arrive into the pain.

You wonder if she recognises you. You're suddenly glad you kept your scrubs on, that your name badge still hangs like a safety net. You can see her drawing back from you, and it's so slight, you think you imagined it until you find the fear in those azure pools.

"Miss Aust- Kate, it's okay…" You want to move towards her, but don't. You want to wash away all the fears that will haunt her ever moment for so many weeks and months to come. "I'm Jack Shephard, I treated you down in the ER."

She nods. She remembers you; you're the one who brought that woman who violated her once again. Oh, in the name of the law, and so there's a greater chance of catching the felon… but when someone has forced themselves inside of you, scraped you raw in a place where only pleasure should be found, you don't imagine it feels much different when another examines you for evidence of the original crime.

And then you see her eyes soften, the alarm leaving her as she finds orientation. Kate nods once more; her fragile hand, bruised where her IV is fixed in place, flutters down to her chest; finds that foreign lump of plastic where the chest drain still lies. Her fingers encircle it, grow used to its position in her skin… so unnatural, and yet this is what is keeping her alive until her lung is re-inflated tomorrow.

She remembers you; you're the one who saved her life.

Kate swallows, draws the courage to find your eyes again… is about to whisper reams of gratitude until you stop her, with those two tiny words she needs to hear on so many levels.

"It's okay."

She almost smiles at you… promptly catches herself. Remembers about the pain that would be flooding her if not for the four-hourly morphine shots the nurses think she sleeps though. She almost smiles at you, and then remembers all the things that will mar every smile, for now and for forever.

Kate glances about her, taking in the dark room, the shadows that creep in the corners; acknowledges this is a private room and not a ward full of staring faces.

"Where am I?" She croaks. Gently, you hand the glass of water from the bedside cabinet to her shaking hands; delicately, like guiding a child, steady the straw while she weakly sits up, removes her oxygen mask, and takes a meagre sip.

"You're in the ICU. Intensive Care Unit," You correct yourself. "Just for one night, to make sure you're recovered enough to re-inflate your lung tomorrow."

Kate takes in this information, processing it. "And…" She trails off, looking away, full of shame and guilt and embarrassment, and all the things you don't want her to feel.

"You…" You draw your chair a millimetre closer, maybe two, blind and feeling in the dark for the best way to say the things no-one should have to hear. "You had some internal bleeding from your uterus, which we stopped. There were some minor lesions externally which a female doctor in the ER stitched. The stitches," You draw your hands together, watch how your fingers curl into patterns with each other. "…they're the ones that dissolve, so we won't need to take them out again."

You think you see a sigh of relief.

You draw breath. "Like I said before, we'll get the results of the tests Miss Rutherford carried out by tomorrow afternoon." You lower your voice. "The police, they'll need to speak to you as soon as possible too." You wanted to send them away, stop her from reliving it all over again. You delayed those uniform questions for her, but only until tomorrow morning.

You wanted to answer them for her, do anything to remove the pain.

Kate swallows, filled with dread. You know what the question will be before it ever leaves her lips. "Am I pregnant?"

This, you know. "No. No, Kate, and that's a definite."

A single tear starts to wind a path down her cheek, finding the barrier of her oxygen mask and slipping down the side for long moments until it dampens the sheet. It is so, so delicate. Another follows as her mask clouds up again, her words sore and hoarse.

"And why are you sitting here beside me?" She is full of gratitude. You can see it in her every move, the way she offers you those eyes you know must be screaming at her to look away.

You smile despite yourself, the steady rush of oxygen filling the room as she inhales.

"What can I say. It's cleaner here than in my apartment. It smells better. And, believe it or not, the food here is like fine cuisine compared to my staple diet of toast and coffee." And that's when you get it, for real, like a rainbow on a day so grey.

Kate Austen smiles.

You keep talking, keen to maintain her mind on something other than the rawness within her. "I also start my next shift in five hours time, which makes it kinda pointless heading home." You scratch just above your eyebrow, a subconscious tic. "And I kinda needed to see for myself that you're okay."

Another tear falls, and another, and another until her face glows in the artificial light of the room. Slowly so not to alarm her, you reach up and remove Kate's oxygen mask; grab a tissue from the over-bed table and gently dab the wetness from her cheeks.

"And am I?"

She'll need months of counselling. She'll need years of reassurance and, one day, a partner with whom she can be gentle and trusting and vulnerable again.

But right now, you are who has saved her life, who has dried her tears; who had been honest with her about the violation she has suffered. And right now the most important thing is Iyour/I reassurance.

"You're gonna be fine, Kate."

You replace the oxygen mask as her breathing grows shorter; those tears continuing, but somehow more peaceful.

"Dr Shep - " She catches herself. "Jack, will you stay with me just 'til I fall asleep?"

You nod, reassuring her. "I'll stay until you wake up again."

She closes her eyes against the night, tears still tracing down her cheeks; but her face loose of torment or hurt. Her hands relax, and minute by minute you watch as dreams lead her away… away to a place you pray is more peaceful than the mind she now must learn to inhabit.

Things will get worse again before they get better. The dark will descend for long, thick periods of time before she might find the light again. And you'll sit here until the morning… for after the most sickening of days, you want to make sure Kate's tomorrow starts with only calm.

She'll feel the pain again before the peace. You shift in your seat, blinking in the dark, waiting for the first signs of day.

It's always darkest right before the dawn.

**""""""""""""""""""""**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 4**  
_10/2/6_

You lied, of course.

When morning arrives, and Kate slowly creeps into wakefulness, you make sure she starts her morning routine before you leave. Vitals, meagre mouthfuls of breakfast, wards rounds which creep along the corridor as you exit, promising to return later. And you lied, of course.

There's no shift starting in five hours. It's your day off. You could have gone home all those hours ago, dissolved into that thick mattress; could have slept right through your alarm, omitted your morning jog, gotten up late and indulged in the pancakes they drown in maple syrup at the little place down the street from your apartment. Right now, as you finally throw on your coat and walk past the bemused faces of colleagues who last saw you venturing upstairs all those hours ago; right now, at nine in the morning on your one day off out of seven, you could be buried under covers and cushions, nowhere near surfacing. And instead, you haven't even been to bed yet.

And it's not even like you've had a night on the town, a game of poker, a meaningless fck with a girl half your age.

The funny thing is, you still don't want to go. There's something odd about the idea of going home when the only feelings you associate with the place are negative, indecisive, transient. You pivot as you exit through the ambulance bay, turn your head and crane your neck to see past the early morning glare of the sunlight on the lower floor windows. You search those anonymous black squares; can find the sixth floor but not individually identify Kate's room, and fleetingly, you wonder why you should even want to.

And so you catch the el without really thinking about it; find yourself fumbling in endless pockets for house keys before you ever realise you're home. Keys placed on the side, you dump your bag beside the breakfast bar and scoop piles of mail up from the dusty floor; bills that will be debited your account without you ever bothering to look at the amount, Snappy Tomato pizza coupons - whose pizza is awful but who you somehow know you'll be phoning sometime soon anyway - your mother's thin scrawl on a flowered envelope. You chuck the lot on the kitchen worktop; especially careful to ignore the latter, able to predict exactly her words without ever exposing them to air.

The trouble is, there are some bridges that may never fully mend, and she will always be standing on your father's shore.

The shower is wildly tempting, now you see it. You kick off your runners, flick round the switch so the water is at the right temperature when you get in. The sound of running water fills the apartment, seems foreign in this place that has been deadly silent for at least the past thirty-six hours. You think, not for the first time, how this place needs a bird or a cat or a child, something to fill it with the noise you can't create by yourself. But then you look around as you undress, the unmade bed and rumpled cushions on the couch, the CD's that never do find their cases again, the pipe under the kitchen sink that's been slowly leaking for months. You sit on the side of the unkempt bed, pull off your scrub trousers and socks, scrape your shirt over your head and kick off your boxers; and think how you've barely got time or effort to look after yourself, let alone anyone else.

The water envelopes your body as you close the shower door behind you… the day washes away from you, down the plughole with the sweat and memories as you lather Lynx gel over your chest. Your neck is tense and sore from constantly jerking to and from sleep in that chair not designed for rest. You lean back into the warm spray, drop your head to your chest, let the water run over your head and into your ears until all you hear is the gurgle of liquid like the ocean within you. And you think, it's been too long since you saw the sea, those rough waves pounding the shore, the wind racing through you like a worry filter.

The shower is over too quickly… you wish you were one of these people who could take twenty minutes, half an hour, indulge in the silence and heat and just being still. But you're on the go, always have been. You grab a towel from the rail, quickly dry yourself and wrap the fabric around your waist… duck out the bathroom and through to your bedroom, find fresh boxers and stonewash jeans, a dark navy shirt. You pull the simple clothes on quickly; direct a few sprays of antiperspirant in the right places, button up the shirt and roll the sleeves up to the elbows.

And you could almost forget. You could almost go to the Seven Eleven downstairs, grab a paper and a doughnut, kick back on a bench in the park and read about how fcked up the rest of world is. But then you'd come across a tiny mention in a tiny column, _twenty-something raped last night on 103rd_; and you know as much as you have no responsibility towards Kate, there's nowhere else you want to be today.

It feels odd, being at the hospital but not working, not wearing scrubs, not running around in a daze with countless charts in your hands. You run across the street to the little coffee bar before you go in, grab a couple of latte's and one of each kind of pastry. Your stomach begins to rumble as the waitress wraps up each of the treats, and it dawns on you you haven't eaten in as long as you remember, and it's unlikely a couple of croissants and a coffee are going to fill you up. You glance at the clock; it's still only noon, and it's unlikely Kate will be discharged before three.

"Could I get, erm… " The waitress taps her stubby pencil against the order pad, impatient. "Just some hash browns and a couple of poached eggs?" You say quickly. She scribbles your order down and gives you a curt nod.

You slide into a soft leather booth, rest your head in your arms as the first wave of the inevitable tiredness washes over you. It's amazing, how used you've gotten to such meagre amounts of sleep. This isn't the usual life of a spinal surgeon… it's harder, immensely more challenging, and yet somehow you've felt more alive in your couple of weeks in the ER than you have in so many years up the stairs.

You know it's in part down to her. You know, really, that you shouldn't have stayed last night, that you shouldn't be buying breakfast foods and going to see her today. You know she has a thousand other things to deal with and that, long term, you fail to fit into any picture; not as her doctor, or her friend, or anything more. And yet she feels like the piece that's been missing for so long.

Someone to care for. 

For your life's been devoid of such a figure for too long, and Kate's too weak, and you're too strong.

When your head jerks up, narrowly avoiding the cold plate of food in front you, and you see the clock again… it's past four. You glance about the café in a sleep-filled daze.

"You were out cold when I brought it over." The waitress mutters to you in something like explanation. "Seemed a shame to wake you up."

You look at the clock once more, shake your head try and clear it… and leap from the both, simultaneously grabbing the pastries and throwing a few dollar bills on the table.

Her bed's empty by the time you get there… but then you suspected it would be, in the elevator ride up, in the dash along the corridor, in the rounding of the corner. Removal of a chest drain's a minor procedure and the long and painful process of dealing with the rape wouldn't be an inpatient affair. As long as Kate felt well enough, she would have been allowed to be discharged… and as you stand in the empty room, paper bag of pastries clutched in your hand, it seems a little like she never existed at all.

The bed is made, blinds drawn, cabinet empty of her few scanty belongings. There's no sound of ragged breath, or the fledgling glint of trust in her eyes catching the night light. There's no quiet comfort between you, that cushion of air you somehow got so used to in a few tiny hours.

A bustling coloured nurse comes in with more fresh sheets, finds you sitting on the edge of the bed looking lost. She glances at you, bemused maybe, calls to one of her colleagues in the hallway.

"Sun! Did you say tall dark and handsome?"

There's a quiet reply.

"Then he's in here, honey…" She re-enters. "You a doctor, there, sittin' on my fresh bed?"

You get up, caught off guard, clear your throat and nod. A quieter Korean woman pops her head around the corner, and begins speaking in a lilting accent.

"Dr. Shephard?" She questions cautiously. You nod once more. "Miss Austen… left this…" She slips a white fold of card from her pocket and hands it to you. "She was discharged after lunch - but said to say thank you, for last night." Sun smiles at you, nods her head slightly, backing shyly from the room.

You're about to sit back down again, when that booming voice of the other nurse catches you.

"Oh no you don't, tall dark and handsome…" She scoots you away before your butt hits the sheets. "Some of us have gotta get work done today."

It's just a scrap of paper. Twenty four hours ago Kate didn't even exist to you, and now you don't want to open this note, because then that's all there will be. You sit in the on call room, not eager to go home, not eager to stay. You just want to know she's safe.

You crack it open, unfold the perfect creases. It's what you expected, and nothing like it at all. Her handwriting is small and wiry, slanting, beautiful.

**Jack,**

Thank you for showing me there are good men in the world. Thank you for telling me it's okay, when a hell of a lot of things might never be okay again. Thank you for being an angel last night when I'd lost my own.

It's going to take time, but at least I have time, thanks to you… Maybe we'll meet again, in another life, in a better way.

Kate

And you know, you'll probably never see Kate again. Her letter says it all. If you'd come up today with coffee and bagels, it wouldn't have been about being her doctor, like it was last night. If you'd found her still there, things would have been awkward, expectant, strange; for last night you were already here, and were extending a courtesy, or so you could both argue. But today… today would have been something different again.

She doesn't need you hanging around, reminding her of the night she nearly died. She doesn't need you as she attends rape counselling sessions, or goes out for the first time, or tries to claw back the trust ripped from her. She doesn't need you for anything that is to come, only what has been.

You can't sleep beside her every night, watch over her, protect her. She must learn, she doesn't need that, not really.

And yet somehow, you find yourself wishing she did, because there's a part of you that would willingly do so.

You walk out those doors into the cool night air, your form a silhouette against the lights of the place. You find the wail of a siren in the air, the chill of your breath carried off in the wind; chuck the still full paper bag you are somehow still carrying in the nearest trash can.

You gaze out down the nearest street, counting the number of blocks out. You think how it's at least a good hour and half to your place from here; but you've never walked it. You wonder what's out there, beyond the curve of the el and the stretch of your naked eye; you wonder if Kate's someplace safe, a sister or a friend staying with her tonight maybe, a police car circling just to make her feel safe. 

You sure hope so, as your long footfalls begin.

It's years before you see her again.

Years where you think of her, from time to time and sometimes all the time… years between then and now.

She's suddenly across the street one summer's day. It's amazing how immediately familiar the sight of her is; how, you think, most of your patients could quite probably stand directly in front of you and you've never even notice them, but she catches your attention from a good fifty feet away. Maybe it's something to do with how delicate she looks, even now, even though you know she's not, not really. Maybe it's the way that hair that was splayed on the gurney, matted with the sweat and the memory of violation, now flows about her with the breeze. Maybe it's the way her eyes dart around her, but with excitement at the street carnival before her and not the urgent fright that filled her at the hospital that night.

She's walking with someone, but at first he is hidden and it's hard to ascertain their relationship. She's smiling so hard, it almost looks forced; but that's the precise beauty of it, that it isn't forced at all. The corners of her eyes crease up as she laughs at a joke, and punches her companion's arm in good humour. And then the obstruction moves, and you can see him.

He looks… you catch yourself. The trouble is, seeing her now, you know all too clearly what you've kind of known all along. There's a small part of you, however slight, that will never be happy with who's behind the obstruction, because as long as you can see someone there, it means that person is not you. As it is, the guy looks pretty decent; dirty blonde hair to his ears, dark stubble shadowing his jaw line, a smile that deep down you'd love to wipe off his face. You'd like to go over there, ask Kate Austen how she is, get the glowing report from this woman who's life you saved. You'd love to buy her that coffee at last, sit down in the sunshine and make small talk; but you know where the conversation would end up. Neither of you would want to go there but you both instinctively would… because that is your link, and always will be. You can't walk into her life again, and won't, because you are one more memory of a time she needs to forget.

Your place is her life was to save it, and in doing so maybe save Kate too. Your place was never to be there forever.

Her place wasn't as your angel, or at least not in the way you hoped it might be.

Her place… was to remind you life's worth living. That your heart still sits out there somewhere, with someone, someplace hidden, because you haven't quite found it again yet.

For now.

**The End**


End file.
